As the value and use of information continues to increase, individuals and businesses seek additional ways to process and store information. One option available to users is information handling systems. An information handling system generally processes, compiles, stores, and/or communicates information or data for business, personal, or other purposes thereby allowing users to take advantage of the value of the information. Because technology and information handling needs and requirements vary between different users or applications, information handling systems may also vary regarding what information is handled, how the information is handled, how much information is processed, stored, or communicated, and how quickly and efficiently the information may be processed, stored, or communicated. The variations in information handling systems allow for information handling systems to be general or configured for a specific user or specific use such as financial transaction processing, airline reservations, enterprise data storage, or global communications. In addition, information handling systems may include a variety of hardware and software components that may be configured to process, store, and communicate information and may include one or more computer systems, data storage systems, and networking systems.
Various components of information handling systems often employ differential signaling. Differential signaling is a method of transmitting information electrically with two complementary signals sent on two paired electrical conductors (e.g., wires, electrical traces, etc.), called a differential pair. Due to any number of factors, differential signals in a differential pair may suffer from in-pair skew, in which the differential signals may be out of phase with respect to one another, switching at slightly different times rather than simultaneously, as would be the ideal case. At sufficiently low communication speeds or data rates, effects of in-pair skew may be ignored. However, at higher speeds or data rates, in-pair skew may become problematic. For example, consider a communications path in which 15 picoseconds of in-pair skew is present. In a 1 Gigabit-per-second communication path, such in-pair skew equals a relatively low 1.5 percent of the data rate. However, in a 40 Gigabit-per-second communication path, such in-pair skew accounts for 60 percent of the data rate, and thus cannot be ignored.
Many design and process approaches have been employed to reduce in-pair skew. However, such approaches are not able to eliminate all sources of in-pair skew. For example, in-pair skew may be introduced by various process tolerances, including without limitation the fiberglass weave of printed circuit boards in which components may be installed, integrated circuit chip mismatches, printed circuit board wiring mismatches, connector pin mismatches, and other process mismatches of signal transmitter and/or receiver components.